Post Meta Data WordPress Plugins

An often overlooked part of your WordPress posts is the Post Meta Data Section. This is the section at the bottom of your post that lists who posted the content and when, and may include the categories, tags, bio information, and a lot of other details you might want readers to know about the post and the author, or even about the blog.

The post meta data section is typically featured in two areas on your blog post: under the post title or below the post content. The post meta data featured under the post title usually consists of the author, date and post categories and/or tags. The post meta data set below the post content may include that information along with the date the post was updated, tags, mood, location, related posts, related tags, author bios, and more.

On my Family History blog, I feature a large post meta data section. As a genealogy blog, the contributors are often family members and/or experts in genealogy research. Therefore, I want information about them and their lives to be featured. The post meta data section includes a combination of template tags and WordPress Plugins to show author information, categories, how many articles each author has contributed to the blog, the date the post was last modified, related posts, article series information, and other information about the post. I also needed to host information about the copyright, use, and reprint policy of the content, and other information.

Note: For the most part, the following WordPress Plugins involve editing your WordPress Theme template files in order to add the Plugin template tag exactly where you wish the generated information to appear. For information and tips on installing any of these WordPress Plugins in WordPress Themes, see How to Install, Configure, and Use WordPress Plugins.

Post Updated WordPress Plugins

For those who offer manuals, guides and technical information on your blogs where the updated date is just as important as the published date, you can add a Post Updated WordPress Plugin to showcase the date the post was updated.

Post Updated and Last Modified are two WordPress Plugins I’ve used to showcase the date the post was last modified. You can put the Plugin template tag in a sentence in your post meta data, combined with the original publish date if you want, such as Originally posted on July 24, 2005, and updated on January 4, 2007.

Many bloggers aren’t satisfied with a normal date. They want something that shows how long it has been since the post was published. The WP Relative Date Plugin showcases the date in a “relative” way by how many minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or year since the post was published. It looks like:

Posted 1 year, 3 months, and 4 days ago

Adding Author Information

Information about the author of the post helps the reader know a little more about their expertise on the subject and can also direct the reader to more posts by the same author.

Get Author Profile WordPress Plugin helps you include information about the post author in your post meta data section. You can include their first and last name, display name, email, website, number of posts they’ve published on the blog, chat IDs, and biography profile information, among other bits and pieces.

Usermeta WordPress Plugin and Userextra WordPress Plugin also allow using author information within your post meta data section. These are not for the lighthearted and require editing the Theme template files and familiarity with PHP, but will help if you really want to customize the information in your post meta data section.

Level10 Blog Matrix WordPress Plugin also provides a lot of author data you can use in the post meta data section, though currently, it is also not for the casual user. I can showcase author information as well as posts by the author globally and within a specific category. It is best used for multiple blogger blogs.

Add User Photo WordPress Plugin adds a photograph of the user to the author profile panel which can be featured in the post meta data section. This is not a simple Plugin and requires editing core programming files and editing your WordPress Theme template files. It’s a great idea, and would be better if the process was made simpler.

Post author meta data is not restricted to the post meta data section. You can feature author information on the author template file using these and other WordPress Plugins. For information on how to create a custom author template file for your WordPress blog, see Author Templates.

Adding Tags

One of the most common items found in the post meta data section are tags. They can be tags which search your own site for related posts, Technorati, Google, or any search results or source you would like to use.

The Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin is one of the most popular tag Plugin. It allows you to add tags to the post meta data section, including related tags and related posts. The tags can be listed in a line with commas, spaces, or other dividers, or in a tag cloud. For more information, see Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin for Dummies.

While not specifically tags, you can “tag” your posts with social bookmarking site submission links in your post meta data section, encouraging readers to recommend your post article to others. See Social Bookmarking Submit Links on WordPress Blogs for more information on WordPress Plugins for social bookmarking link bars.

Adding Post Lists

The term stickiness refers to the ability of a website to keep users on the site longer than a glance. The longer they hang around, the more “sticky” the blog. You can increase blog navigation, and stickiness, by providing a list of posts in your post meta data section, inviting your readers to see what else you have to offer them.

The BlogStats PCC Plugin is a fairly new WordPress Plugin which also includes post costs by author as well as for your entire blog. It will allow you to post stats on the total number of posts, comments, categories, and more.

Why not mix up the info and include how many categories you have on your blog in your post meta data section. CatCount WordPress Plugin also displays the category count.

You can even use the Post Count WordPress Plugin to create a sentence that says “This is only one of the 846 posts for you to read on this blog”.

Random File WordPress Plugin will retrieve a randomly chosen file in a specific directory on your blog’s server. Inside of the files you can include code for random images/logos or text to create quotes, sayings, images, and more in your post meta data section.

With the Customizable Post Listings WordPress Plugin, you can also add a random list of posts on your blog, either from all your posts or from a specific category. This will introduce your readers to more of your brilliant blog content.

You can add post meta data to categories, author pages, archives, tag pages, and any page in your WordPress Theme. Experiment and have some fun with this.

WordPress Plugins that will work in the meta data sections need to be able to work within the WordPress Loop or stand on their own, so you have a lot of flexibility with your choices. You can include the latest weather report from your area, time zone information, cartoons, even signatures, and anything you want in your post meta data section.

Are you using any WordPress Plugins within your post data section? What are you using and why?

7 Comments

Hi, I need you help please.
I m looking a way to add something like a picture or javascript after the end of each post in wordpress. I want to create a plugin which can do that automatically but I don t know which wordpress code to use.
Thanks

And all I can do is ask you questions. I’ll do my best. If you want a different picture at the end of every post, add it manually to your Write Post panel at the bottom of your posts. Why mess around? This way, you can have the picture you want, not any old picture.

See, there are many answers, but even more questions. It just all depends on what you want to do. For more detailed information, I recommend you really describe your intent and post it on the WordPress Support Forum to get the exact help you need. Good luck!

Hello
Could you please advise me if there is a wordpress plugin to add the date etc to a post url. I am wanting to get my news blog accepted by google news, but the post url must have at least 3 digit I.d I am wanting to generate this id automatically for each post.
the url has got to look something like this

My posts get into Google News without trying, so I’m not sure where you got the requirements. These are controlled by pretty permalinks and I’ve not seen a WordPress produced URL like that. It’s pretty ugly. I wouldn’t do it no matter how much I wanted in Google News if that was the requirement. And I don’t know of a Plugin that will help you create such an ugly URL. Good luck.